This brooch is long, measuring 15 cm, to emphasize the sinewy nature of snakes.
The brooch is by James Arpad using the ‘pave’ technique. James’s father Steven Arpad developed using this technique of setting Swarovski flat-backed rhinestones, sometimes referred to as ‘crystals’ on to fashion, accessories and jewellery. It is said that Steven Arpad decorated the iconic red shoes with four inch heels made for Marilyn Monroe for the film ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’. The shoes were made by Salvatore Ferragamo and now housed in their museum in Florence, Italy.
James Arpad originally wanted to be an architect but shifted into creating fashion accessories. He is widely known for designing earrings, but he did do other pieces of jewellery. His designs were sold in New York and San Fransico. In 1992 James designed and made pins made of red leather and decorated with ‘pave’ set rhinestones. They were sold for hundreds of dollars in support of AIDS, Elizabeth Taylor wore one of these pins at a charity event in 1992. One of James Arpad’s original AIDS pins is now housed at the Smithsonian Design Museum Collection. There are a number of red ribbon style AIDS pins in the collection.
After his father Steven Arpad’s death in 1999, James closed his fashion design business and moved to Atlanta, Georgia, USA to look after his elderly mother.
Snakes in religion and mythology are widely seen as symbols of creation, fertility, transformation and immortality. They shed their skin symbolising rebirth and they slither on the ground giving them a connection to mother earth.
There are a number of folktales in England relating to snakes. In Suffolk it is said on seeing the first snake of the year, you should kill it immediately. When an elderly lady in Suffolk was asked in 1924 why she had killed the snake she said “Ah! Now I have killed all my enemies”. In the Wordsworth Dictionary of Dreams it says “To dream of snakes, is a foreboding of evil in its various forms and stages.”
And an interesting fact about snakes is they have neither ears nor eyelids, they hear through their jaw and can’t blink. And in Los Angeles there is a Snake Yoga studio, in their literature they describe the experience as “Our pet snakes are calming & grounding”. I am going to have to take their word for it, this is something I am most certainly not going to try for myself.